Forgive Like Jesus

Like Jesus • Sermon • Submitted 3 years ago

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In Mark 16:15 Jesus says, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.” I believe Jesus’s Words here summarize the Great Commission and give clear direction to the church as to our mission. The month of March we are going to focus on Mobilizing for Missions. Throughout the month, we are going to spend time praying for our missionaries and seeking ways for us to engage our community with the intent of sharing the gospel. We are going to educate you about the Southern Baptist Convention’s Cooperative Program and how the money we send the SBC is used to spread the gospel. You are going to hear from church planters who receive support from our church, whether it is directly or through the GBA. You’ll learn more about the Annie Armstrong Easter offering and how that money is used for taking the gospel throughout America. So, my prayer is at the end of March, you will have an understanding of how SBC churches work together to preach the gospel throughout the world and you’ll have a clear calling from God on how to reach those closest to you who don’t know Jesus.

Pray

We are continuing our walk through the book of Mark this morning. Remember, we talked last week about Mark’s goal in writing this account of Jesus’s life is to prove that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament’s promised Messiah.

Jesus’s earthly ministry started after His baptism, which we talked about last week. Mark records that following His baptism, Jesus headed off into the wilderness where He was tempted by Satan for forty days. Afterwards, He begins calling His first disciples, and they head off to Capernaum where Mark tells us He started teaching and healing people. In Mark 1:32, Mark tells us that while he was the home of Simon and Andrew, along with James and John, He heals Simon’s mother-in-law. Then, as the night was falling over Capernaum, verses 33-34 tells us that “the whole city was gathered at the door. And [Jesus] healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons.” The next day, Jesus heads out to a quiet place to pray. Simon and some others go find Him to tell Him that the people are looking for Him. So, Jesus gathers them all in a boat and they head off to Galilee. Well, some time passes by and Jesus returns to Capernaum, which brings us to today’s passage.

READ: Mark 2:1-12

As we begin looking at the events in this passage, I want to go ahead and point out to you this fact. This entire event is about Jesus’s authority as God to forgive sins. He has already demonstrated His authority over sickness and physical ailments. He’s shown His authority over demons. Now, He’s about to demonstrate that He has the authority to do something that only God can do, forgive sins.

To help us understand this fact, we are going to examine this miraculous event from four points of view. First, we are going to examine it from the point of view of the crowd, then the paralytic, then Jesus, and then the leaders that were in attendance.

I. The Crowd (2:2)

Mark opens the event by telling us that Jesus is back in Capernaum with His disciples. Some scholars believe they have returned to the home of Simon and Andrew, since Mark tells us that’s where they were when Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law. But whose home they are in doesn’t matter. They are inside a home and it’s obvious that word has gotten out that Jesus is back because the home is packed with people. There are so many people inside the home that there was no room for anyone else to get in. Now, there is something here we must understand. The fact that the house was packed out does not indicate that the people were there for the right reasons.

Here’s what I mean. Mark’s told us that thus far in Jesus’s ministry He’s been going around and healing people. He’s done some teaching in the synagogues, but for the most part, He’s been healing people and casting out demons. So, it’s important to understand that just because the house is full, doesn’t mean the people are there to hear what Jesus has to say. Most likely, they are there to see what else He can do for them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are some there because they are devoted to Him and they believe He is God’s Son. But the vast majority of the people are just there to see what else He can do for them.

Alright, so we have this home packed with people who, for the most part, are uncommitted and indifferent when it comes to Jesus. But Mark says that Jesus begins preaching to the crowd. Notice in the latter portion of verse 2 that Mark says He was “preaching the word to them.” This means that Jesus is sharing the gospel with them. He’s already shown them that He can heal their physical and mental needs, and now He’s telling them how He can heal their eternal needs too.

II. The Friends (2:3)

Mark says that while Jesus was sharing the gospel with this crowd who, again, is just looking for Jesus to do more stuff for them, these four men arrive carrying a paralytic on a mat. At first, his friends tried to get in the front door, but they were unable to because of the crowd. Nobody was willing to budge. After all, they weren’t about to let anyone push them out of a chance to receive some kind of miracle from Jesus. So, when the men realized the front door wasn’t an option, they decided the next best thing to do would be to take him up to the roof and drop him down directly in front of where Jesus was teaching.

In these days, people spent a lot of time on their roofs because it was cooler up there. If you’ll recall in the story of David and Bathsheba, David noticed Bathsheba while she was bathing in a tub on the roof of her home. Back then houses had flat roofs made out of rafters, with sticks & hardened mud for mortar, and tiles made up their shingles. A staircase was built on the outside of the home to give people access to the rooftop.

These four men climb the stairs with their friend on a stretcher and when they get to the top, they start digging through the hard and crusty mud to make a hole large enough for their friend’s stretcher.

I wonder what it was like for those people in the room below? Here they are listening to Jesus teach and all of sudden dust starts coming down from the ceiling. Pieces of sticks, and chunks of hard, dried mud start falling on their heads. My guess is that they were probably covered with debris. Then, all of a sudden, the people in the home look up, and see four men lowering a stretcher with a man on it. And they lower him directly in front of Jesus.

Here’s what I want us to understand about these four men. They didn’t turn a blind eye to the need of their friend and they took the time to do what needed to be done to get him in front of the One person they knew who could heal him. And nothing was going to stand in their way.

I wonder how many of us would have just given up and went home? I wonder how many of us would’ve said, “Well, we tried to help, but it’s time to get back to what I was doing.” How many of us would’ve said, “I’m sure Jesus will be back around some other time. We’ll bring you to Him then. Maybe it’ll be easier.”

We live in a society where we are just too busy.

I think that sometimes we are so busy with our own schedules that we fail to realize God how many people God places in our paths everyday that are in desperate need the gospel. Sure, they may not be paraplegics as is the case with this man, but all around us are people who have messed lives due to their sinful lifestyles and they are in desperate need of another person to share the Good News about Jesus with them. All around us are people who are spiritually sick and have been deceived into believing that consuming all the pleasures and joys in this life, no matter the cost on themselves or other people, is all that matters. They need someone to come along side of them and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with them.

Are we going to be like these friends and do whatever it takes to share the gospel with them, or are we going to be like the crowd who is so consumed with our own affairs that we don’t even notice they are there?

III. The Paralytic (2:4-5)

Not much detail is given about the paralytic man other than he cannot do anything for himself. Most all scholars believe the man was, at the very least, paralyzed from the waist down. There are those who believe the man was possibly paralyzed from the neck down. This belief is based on the term that Mark uses to describe him. In the ESV, which is the version of the Bible I use each week, Mark describes him as a paralytic. The King James Version says the man was “one sick of the palsy.” In the Greek, “palsy” describes someones as immobile from the legs down or the neck down. Therefore, either belief may be true. The point, though, is that this man needed help getting around because he was immobile at the very least from the waist down and potentially from the neck down.

Something else we know about this man, and his friends, is that they all had faith that Jesus could heal the man. Now, here’s the deal, I don’t know if these men understood that Jesus was the Son of God, the promised Messiah or if they had seen Him performing miracles the last time He was in Capernaum and knew He could heal their friend. But it is apparent that they all believed that Jesus could heal the man. Otherwise, why go to all the trouble carry the man to the house and all the trouble to get him up the stairs to the roof and all the trouble to tear open a hole in the roof and all the trouble to lower the man down to Jesus. And why would the paralytic willingly place himself in the position of going through all of this, if he didn’t believe Jesus could heal him. So, I don’t know if any of them expected Jesus to do what He did when He forgave the man of his sins, or if they believed Jesus would heal their friend and make him walk.

Theologian John Gill says whenever sinners are forgiven for their sins, “blessed are they . . .their sins will never be imputed to them; they will never be remembered more; they are blotted out of God’s debt-book; they are covered out of his sight, and are removed as far as the east is from the west, even all their sins, original and actual, secret or open, of omission, or commission . . .” —John Gill

The paralyzed man, because of the faith of his friends, and honestly because of his own faith in Jesus’s ability to heal him, received a gift greater than being able to walk. He received forgiveness for his sins.

I wonder how many of us here this morning have approached Jesus in prayer asking Him for one thing, and instead He does something far greater than we could ever expect? The friends and the paralytic simply wanted their friend healed, but Jesus does something even greater, He forgives the man of his sins. Now, as we know, Jesus eventually heals the man of his physical ailments, but had He not done so, just forgiving the man’s sins was enough. We cannot miss the significance of the fact that Jesus forgave this man’s sins.

For anyone in this room or anyone watching online at home, I do not want you to miss the message Jesus is sending us in this moment. You may be dealing with some kind of physical ailment, financial crisis, marital problem, or work-related issue. And as stressful and pressing as whatever it is you’re dealing with may be, it pales in comparison to living life without experiencing the forgiveness of your sins. Even had Jesus not performed a physical healing on this paralytic, just having his sins forgiven was good enough. While it may not have ended his earthly suffering, it ended his eternal suffering and that’s all that matters.

David writes in Psalm 32, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, who sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit” (Psalm 32:1-2, ESV).

IV. The Critics (2:6,7)

Intermingled within the crowd were some scribes. In Biblical times, scribes were men who were trained to read and write. They were also experts in Mosaic Law. In each of the four gospel accounts, Scribes often appeared along side Chief Priests and Pharisees as religious leaders. These men were in that home on that particular day for one purpose only, to find something wrong with Jesus’s teachings so they could have Him convicted of blasphemy and killed.

We know this to be the case because of an incident that occured when Jesus was in Galilee prior to coming back to Capernaum. Luke 4 records the time when Jesus was in His home town of Nazareth teaching in the synagogue. While there He’s given a scroll from Isaiah to read. Jesus takes the scroll and finds the words from Isaiah 61:1,2 and Isaiah 58:6 and begins reading them. “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19, ESV). After reading these words, Jesus handed the scroll back to the official and sat down. He looked around at the people and said, “Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:20, ESV).

This set the stage for the people in the synagogue to become so angry with Jesus that they run Him out of the synagogue and toward a hill where they were going to throw Him off and kill Him. But, Jesus escapes.

Now, I’m not saying that these are the same scribes at Simon and Andrew’s home, but certainly they would know about Jesus and the incident at the Synagogue in Nazareth.

Mark says that after Jesus forgave the sins of the man, the Holy Spirit informs Jesus that these scribes are questioning in their hearts Jesus’s authority to forgive sins. In their hearts they are calling Jesus a liar and saying He’s profaning the name of God. To these scribes, Jesus was nothing more than a mortal man who did not have the ability or the authority to forgive sins.

V. The Forgiver of Sins (8-12a)

So, Jesus looks asks them about it. He says, “What’s easier for you to believe? That I can forgive this man’s sins or that I can cause him to walk again?” And before they could respond, He says, “Okay, to show you that I have the authority to forgive sins, I’ll also make the man walk.” And he does. The paralytic picks up the stretcher that his friends brought him to the home on, and he headed home.

What Jesus is really saying to these scribes is this, “What is easier to have faith in? What you cannot see—the forgiving of sins—or what you can see—the paralyzed man get up and walk home?” What is easier to believe about me, that I can forgive this man’s sins or that I can cause him to walk home? So, to prove that He has the authority to do both, Jesus goes ahead and heals the man. Now the man has received two blessings from Christ. One is the eternal blessing of having his sins forgiven and the other is the immediate blessing of having his body healed. Jesus proves beyond any doubt that He is the only one who has authority over our present needs and the authority to forgive sins.

I want you to understand the picture that Jesus has just painted. We’ve gone from a paralyzed man who is unable to walk being dropped down in front of Jesus because both he and his friends have faith that Jesus can heal him, to Jesus forgiving the man’s sins, to the man being physically healed. If this isn’t a picture of the gospel, I do not know what is!

Unforgiven sin paralyzes us spiritually and brings about unnecessary suffering on our lives. Do we suffer as Christians, of course we do. But at least we know there is a purpose behind our suffering as Christians and that our suffering is no eternal, which gives us hope. Unrepentant and unforgiven sin though? That lends itself to the possibility of earthly and eternal suffering. But, when Jesus Christ forgives our sins, it’s not just the past sins, or the current sins, or the future sins, it is all our sins. They are all forgiven! And when we make the decision to accept Him as Lord and Savior of our lives and He forgives our sins, we are forever healed! No matter the physical ailments we have on this earth, our faith in Christ tells us that when we die and get to heaven, we are disabled no more!

Pastor R.C. Sproul says, “Forgiveness is our greatest need. Disease, depression, sorrow, poverty, injustice, and all other ills are true needs; ultimately, however, all these ills exist because sin has corrupted creation. Not all of our problems are caused by our specific sins, but all of them are due to the fact that we live in a fallen world and suffer from sin’s corruption. If we are not saved from our sins, any fix to these problems is temporary and hell awaits us.” —R.C. Sproul

Remember, Mark’s reasoning behind his account of Jesus’s life is to cause readers to wrestle with the question, “Was Jesus really who He claimed to be? And if He was, how am I going to respond?”

In the early 40s and 50s, C.S. Lewis argued that Jesus was either a lunatic, a liar, or exactly who He claimed to be. This thought was not original to Lewis. In 1936, a man named Watchman Nee addressed a similar argument in his book Normal Christian Faith. The basis of both arguments are the same:

First, a person who claims to be God, yet is not God, has to be a lunatic. Think about it. If claimed to be God, yet wasn’t God, He’d have to be lunatic to allow Himself to endure all the ridicule and suffering that He endured. I mean only a lunatic would suffer and die on a cross fr something that wasn’t true, right?

Second, if he is neither God nor a lunatic, he has to be a liar because he deceives others by his lie. Think about the amount of people throughout history who believe that Jesus is God. If He’s not God, then He’s lied to all of them, thus He is a liar.

Finally, if he is neither a lunatic or a liar, then He has to be God.

So, that leaves us with a decision to make. Either we accept and believe that Jesus was not God, but instead He was a madman. Or, we accept that Jesus neither God or a madman, thus we believe He was a liar. But, if He was neither a lunatic or a liar, then He must be God.

I think there were people who believed he was a lunatic. I think the scribes looked at him as a liar. But there were at least five people who left that home that day believing that Jesus was exactly who He claimed to be.